Month: May 2025
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Glimmers from a golden age
Norway is one of those countries – like Macedonia or Mongolia – that has a modest footprint today but once settled and ruled distant lands. This is not to say that Norway’s best days are behind it. But it does have a storied, almost mythic past. Unlike the Greeks and Romans, the Old Kingdom of…
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Twisted symbols
Pick any aspect of ancient Scandinavian culture – from Norse religion to runic writing – and do an online search. It won’t take you long to find groups and individuals who are co-opting this culture to serve white supremacist ideologies. The Nazis were of course fascinated with Norse culture, believing that it harkened back to…
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Bridges across the pond
To travel abroad as an American in 2025, particularly to Western Europe, is to open yourself up to questions about what it means to be an American. For 80 years, Europe knew it could rely on the U.S. as a bulwark against the forces of despotism and tyranny. That faith has been shattered. Norway was…
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Norway’s scattered children (part 2)
One-third of Norway’s population left the country between 1825 and 1925 — nearly a million people. As a citizen of a country that has more often been the recipient of migrants, I can scarcely imagine the impact those departures would have had, both for individual families and for the nation as a whole. In a…
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Norway’s scattered children (part 1)
Two hundred years ago this year, a small ship set sail from Stavanger, Norway bound for New York City with 52 passengers and crew. This was Norway’s “Mayflower moment”.* Who could have guessed that over the coming century the number of migrants from Norway to the United States would reach nearly a million? The Norwegian…
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Bertha Thorpe Veum and her family from Nes
As I mentioned in a prior post, my biological great-great grandfather, Erik Veum (1864-1942), made a journey back to Norway in 1921 with two of his daughters. Erik’s wife Bertha (1864-1937) did not accompany them. Perhaps she had less reason to travel. Unlike Erik, who had left many family members behind when he emigrated, Bertha…
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The ancestors of Erik Embretsen Veum, father of J. Oscar Veum
Three years ago, I wrote a blog post about my biological great-grandfather, Johan “Oscar” Veum, even while asserting my belief that family is not biology. I still strongly believe this. You’d think then that I might leave this branch alone. But that’s the funny thing about genealogy; you tug at a thread and it tugs…
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The cup that launched a ship
The year is 1850, and in a small village perched at the end of a fjord in Western Norway, a young servant hurries through her tasks. Malene has no education and very little savings, but for the first time in her life she is hopeful. Earlier that year a young man named Ole had come…
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A history of the Hauge farms of the Arna Valley, by Ole Johan Hauge
When I was preparing for this trip to Norway, I posted on a Facebook page for the community of Arna that I was seeking some local history expertise. I had discovered that my great-great-great grandfather, Ole Jensen Hauge, emigrated from Arna, but I didn’t know anything about the area. Local volunteers kindly came to my…
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Oh, those Johnsons
My grandmother’s Aunt Glenrose – my great-great aunt – was a beloved character, full of stories, jokes and poems. A spinster for life, she was always taking care of others in the family: nursing parents and siblings through sickness and old age, looking after one and then the next generation of children. My parents sometimes…
Deep Roots 